The age is beginning to tell on 86-year-old Advani. Neither is he mentally as alert, nor does he have smart responses as he used to. He also tends to forget. His memory seems to dim at times about people, places and incidents. The same goes for his wife Kamla Advani, who asked guests at home for their names at least three to four times. She doesn’t even remember whether the guest who have come home have been offered tea and coffee. So hospitable is she that at times the guests have to have multiple cups of tea. But they fail to convince Kamla ji that the tea has already been served to them.

The way party’s veteran leader Murli Manohar Joshi changed his stand on Modi’s candidacy as the prime minister left the Advani camp shocked. From Goa to Delhi, Joshi vehemently opposed Modi and was second only to Advani on this. Sources reveal that Joshi had made it clear in front of Advani, too, that be it the party’s Parliamentary Board meeting that happened last Friday, or the event celebrating the decision thereafter, he will boycott both events. In any case, he was supposed to be out of Delhi in Sagar. As promised to Advani camp, Joshi was absent for the Parliamentary Board meeting, but as soon as Modi’s name was announced, Joshi stood first in the line to congratulate him with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. And when Modi bent down to touch Joshi’s feet, he embraced Modi, forgetting all his grudges.

A new FIR is going to be registered soon on the court’s direction on the Coalgate matter. The most surprising thing is that the FIR is going to be against unknown people. This makes it clear that the CBI has almost decided to give a clean chit to the PM and some ministers from the PMO who were feeling the Coalgate heat. According to sources, the FIR is going to be a mere formality and after the FIR is registered, the CBI is preparing a questionnaire to send to some of the officials at the PMO, so that the matter can be quickly taken care of. The files that the CBI had asked from the PMO and the Coal Ministry haven’t been sent until now. The 793 files that the CBI has got from the PMO and the ministry have little to do with the Coalgate scam and are related to matters before the coal blocks were allotted. The committee that the ministry has formed to search the files is also doing little. So much so that sources claim that the committee is going through the file, scouring through them to see if the PMO is in anyway getting into trouble because of them. And the places where the heat threatens to become a fire are being doused with water. Everything possible is being done to keep them safe. If the lost files are really not found, those accused in the Coalgate matter will not get any conviction based solely on the CAG report. The CBI as well as the PMO knows this.

With the L.K. Advani Versus Narendra Modi fight coming out in the open, all eyes in the BJP are on the BJP patriarch’s rally this Sunday at Akola near the historic Fatehpur Sikri. Advani has already expressed to BJP president Rajnath Singh his reservations over projecting Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

The Modi camp fears that if Singh goes ahead with his plan to get the BJP poster boy’s name cleared as the prime ministerial candidate by a majority vote in the BJP parliamentary board meeting on Friday, Advani might be at his attacking best at the Akola rally.

The Modi camp apprehends that Advani might obliquely make public some of his concerns that he raised with Singh over Modi as prime ministerial candidate. According to sources, Advani told Singh on Wednesday that he was only fighting to save the party and had no personal ambitions.

Advani strongly feels that declaring Modi’s name at this juncture will be very damaging for the party.
He told Singh that the atmosphere in the country was for the BJP at the moment, but declaring Modi’s name will polarise the electorate and “hand over the power to the Congress on a platter in 2014”.

Virtually lecturing Singh on the responsibilities a party president ought to carry out, Advani reminded the Thakur leader that he himself had been party president four times in the past. He told Rajnath Singh that a party president was not supposed to express his preference for an individual, even obliquely, in the manner Rajnath Singh rooted for Modi.

Advani told Singh that other leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi, Anant Kumar and Nitin Gadkari were also opposed to declaring Modi’s name at this juncture. Sources said at one point of time, Singh told Advani that the Sangh wanted Modi’s name to be declared as there was an undercurrent in the country in the favour of the Gujarat chief minister. At this, Advani questioned Singh, saying if Sangh wanted to impose Modi, why had it left the decision on the BJP.

The BJP is in a quandary over the Akola rally, the preparations for which are being supervised by Varun Gandhi. A lot of propaganda has been done for the rally, showcasing Advani as the star speaker. So there’s no questioning of cancelling it even if Advani chooses to swim against the current in the BJP over the Modi issue.

BJP politician Sudhanshu Mittal, who was once considered to be close to Pramod Mahajan, later Sushma Swaraj and not Rajnath Singh, has found his new mentor in the form of Murli Manohar Joshi. A few days ago, Mittal organised a meeting of several prominent BJP politicians at Joshi’s residence. Those such as Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughn Sinha also attended the meeting. It is believed that Mittal, considered to be the Chanakya, had on his agenda to portray Murli Manohar Joshi as the prime ministerial candidate.

Because the elections are round the corner, it is the perfect time for sting operations. On the directions of strategists in Delhi, two more stings might see the light of the day against Modi and his associates, that too this September. Based on Bhupinder Yadav’s CD, Delhi has sent clear instructions to the CBI director that the CBI should prepare an application asking for Shah’s bail to be cancelled. Sources close to Delhi say that CBI’s homework this time is up to the mark and anytime during end September the CBI may seek from the court to cancel Shah’s bail. Shah going to the jail once again will mean that Modi’s overreaching ambition will, once again, be behind bars.

As the date to Lok Sabha elections in the country comes nearer, the Congress is trying with all its might to corner Modi. DCP Vanjara’s 10-page letter is a mere start; in the days to come, two more such letters will be out in the open. The second letter may be from Gujarat’s former Additional Director General of Police P P Pandey, or IPS G L Singhal. And the gist of all these letters will be that Chief Minister Narendra Modi and then State Home Minister Amit Shah knew everything. It is worth remembering that the axis on which the anit-Modi movement is turning is in Delhi. And a few people are working day and night on it.

BJP Secretary and party in-charge in UP Amit Shah is Congress’ number one enemy at present. Actually, the Congress wants to attack Shah so that Modi feels the heat, too. For now, Shah is out on bail on Sohrabuddin matter. But end-September, an application is due to be given to the CBI court about cancelling his bail. Come to think of it, Shah is entangled in the web he created himself. He had been arrested in the Sohrabuddin and Kausar Bi case, and by the time Tulsi Prajapati’s case came to light, Shah had already got a bail from the court. So when he realised that he might have to go back to prison in connection with the Prajapati case, he approached the Supreme Court saying that the cases of Sohrabuddin, Kausar Bi and Tulsi Prajapati are inter-connected. What the need for a separate FIR in this case? Which means Shah did not want to file for another bail in the Prajapati matter. So, the court also agreed and the three cases were clubbed together. Now the new development and twist in the tale is that as soon as the three cases were clubbed, the maximum punishment for it became capital punishment and the CBI may repeat this in the court. So, just before the Lok Sabha elections, if the court cancels Shah bail, Modi will have to look for a new face in UP.

According to the BJP’s Parliamentary Board and Core Committee, it has been more or less decided that the party will not project Vijay Goyal as the party’s chief ministerial candidate from Delhi. Goyal too will remain just one of the dozen candidates chosen for the chief minister’s post. But according to the latest survey the party conducted in Delhi, the news is not so good for the chief minister’s post in the state. Harsh Vardhan is 3 per cent votes behind in Krishna Nagar, Aarti Mehra 6 per cent behind in Malviya Nagar seat, Harsharan 4 per cent behind in Balli seat, and Vijay Goyal 5 per cent behind in Model Town seat. So a few days ago when Goyal approached Gadkari with a complain about Harsh Vardhan saying that “Doctor sahib is going to lose again,” Gadkari immediately shot back with, “The report from your seat is even worse.”

The BJP is pretty concerned about Arvin Kejriwal and his party’s growing influence, considering the Delhi Assembly elections that are to be held soon. The head of Delhi BJP, Nitin Gadkari, wants some sort of friendly fight or understanding between Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP, but Kejriwal is one of the critics of Gadkari. So after a lot of thinking, Gadkari has asked BJP political leader Maneka Gandhi to speak with Kejriwal. A few days ago, Gadkari spoke to Maneka at his Teen Murti residence and was successful in convincing her that she and only she can speak with Kejriwal. According to Gadkari, he himself has heard the Aam Aadmi Party head speak highly of Maneka Gandhi in at least four speeches. And if there is one politicians who knows how to serve others, it is Maneka Gandhi.